MyOpinion

I am a gas car fan, but not in the normal way. Most self-described combustion aficionados mean they've owned a few fun cars, maybe wrenched on one or two and usually kept up with whatever's on the cover of the magazines. But I went a little further into that world. I didn't own a few cars. I owned 13 gas-burners over the course of 5 years, almost all of them old and beaten up. I didn't just read the magazines, I built my life around working for one, then became the reviews editor at Road & Track. But when I got the call to work at InsideEVs, I knew it was time to take a step into the future.

I leased a new EV. It's a 2024 Chevy Blazer EV, and I love it. Let me explain why.

Its powertrain is quieter than the smoothest BMW inline-six. It rides beautifully because it isn't trying to be a sports car or a truck. And the technology I've derided as a built-to-last enthusiast turns out to be quite charming in my day to day life. Sure, no screens and a double-din stereo would be more repairable. But it's ok to admit that I like having Google Maps and Spotify built in to my car. I love having a 360-degree camera and a power tailgate. I love knowing I have modern-car safety, with potential life savers like automatic braking with pedestrian detection. The curmudgeon in me wants to complain that humans should be able to drive without electronic aids, but a hundred years of experimenting with that has lead to a lot of deaths.

I love that my car doesn't need to be turned on or off. Like every electronic in my life, it knows to turn itself on when I start using it, and turn itself off when I walk away. I love that it still has overrides to keep it on, or force it off. I love that I can heat up the cabin without waiting 15 minutes for the engine to warm up, regardless of whether I'm driving or using remote start. I love one-pedal driving, and the feeling of a 1-to-1 relationship between my right foot and the rate of acceleration. There's no delay, no waiting for a dawdling transmission to downshift.

Most of all, I love the feeling of driving it at night. I love zooming unto a dark highway, without noise or drama, blasting into the night lit by nothing but LED headlights. I love that moment where there's a quick break in traffic, and one quick press of the throttle rockets me forward with more immediacy than the best internal combustion car can manage. And I love that I can enjoy all of this without any tailpipe emissions.

Some 295,000 plugin vehicles were registered in Europe in September, rising 6% YoY, which represents the EV market’s return to growth for the first time since April. This is even more significant when you consider the overall market fell by 4%, to 1.1 million units.

Interestingly, BEVs are the ones pushing the market upwards, growing 14% YoY to 212,000 units. PHEVs remain stuck in red, falling 9% in September to 83,000 units.

Looking at the remaining powertrains, only HEVs were positive, growing 12% YoY, while petrol was down 19% and diesel continued to free fall, dropping 24%.

As such, September’s automotive market has seen some seismic changes, with plugin vehicle share of the overall European auto market rising to 26% (19% full electrics/BEVs). Added to the 34% market share of HEVs, that means that 60% of all passenger cars sold in Europe last September had some kind of electrification.

Even more importantly, for the first time, sales of HEVs (34% share) surpassed sales of petrol vehicles (29% share) in September, a trend that is surely here to stay. Meanwhile, diesel (8%) continues to lose relevance every passing day. At this pace, I wouldn’t be surprised if diesel was dead in Europe before 2030, with petrol following it a couple of years later.

These results kept the 2024 plugin vehicle share at 22% (15% for BEVs alone) through the end of September, which is only 1% less than where we were a year ago, at 23%.

Finally, looking at the sales breakdown between BEVs and PHEVs, despite the good result for pure electrics in September, they represented 72% of all plugin sales, and they are at exactly at the same level in 2024 as they were a year ago (67%). With new or refreshed models landing soon for both powertrains — namely, cheaper BEVs and longer range PHEVs — and new CO2 ceilings in Europe, it will be interesting to see how the two technologies behave next year.

There have been a few teasers over the past few days, but now the cat is out of the bag: Fireproof Games has unveiled a new VR game called Ghost Town.

In Ghost Town, you take on the role of Edith Penrose, a witch turned ghost hunter who runs a successful paranormal investigation agency. Set in 1983, Edith roams the haunted streets of London, tracking down and exorcising restless spirits.

Her world is turned upside down when her brother disappears and a mysterious new lead promises clues to his whereabouts. Edith's journey begins with a visit to a remote Scottish island in the hope that a gifted psychic can provide some much-needed answers.

Four years of development have gone into the new project. If Ghost Town turns out to be as atmospheric, creepy and challenging as The Room VR, then we can expect a real VR highlight. Unfortunately, we don't know exactly when the VR game will be released, but the studio says it's coming soon.

Code discovered in a recent Google Play update indicates the company may soon roll out support for XR headsets on its Android app store, which would mark a decisive shift in the competitive landscape.

As reported by Android Authority, code in version 43.3.32-31 of the Google Play app contains mention of “XR headset,” including a new headset icon that ostensibly indicates whether an app works with the supported device.

Google has technically hosted XR games on Play in the form of Cardboard apps since 2014, which use Android smartphones as ad hoc VR displays—something that was big in kickstarting user interest in the early days of consumer VR, but not so much in the day of standalone headsets like Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro.

The addition of a dedicated section in the Play store and official device support however points to something bigger than Cardboard, or even its now-defunct Google Daydream platform, which the company abandoned in 2019.

Developed by Myron Games (Deisim), Underworld Overseer is a villain-protagonist adventure where you play as the god-like Overseer fighting human invaders across an 18-level campaign. You're given many tools for defending your lair like placing traps and casting spells, alongside creating specific rooms that cater to your minions' individual needs, like farms for your food supply.

We enjoyed Underworld Overseer in our preview earlier this year, praising the "impressive" presentation with enjoyable strategic gameplay. Underworld Overseer's presentation already shows an impressive amount of polish. The cel-shaded visuals look great on Quest 3 for both NPCs and environments, even when you move up close. What I've seen so far looks very promising, and I'll be keeping an eye out for the full release. Underworld Overseer arrives today on the Meta Quest platform and Steam.

Battery-electric vehicles (BEV) are now hitting an all-time record of 22.2% market share in the state – more than twice the national BEV market share.

The MeganeX Superlight 8K isn’t called “Superlight” for a random reason: it is actually small and light. I was impressed by how this headset can be so small and lightweight yet so powerful in terms of resolution. I would like to make a comparison with the Bigscreen Beyond, but I haven’t had the occasion to personally test a Beyond, so I can not do that, sorry.

MeganeX claims on its website that the headset has a special design that guarantees no pressure on the face because there is a halo headband that you put around your head that takes care of keeping the headset still on your head. Then the headset is just rotated with a flip-up design so that it gently lies in front of your face. This claim is true, but it carries its own problems. The demo unit was clearly overused, so the flip-up juncture was a bit loose and the headset so was not stable in front of my eyes. I had to keep it still with one of my hands, which not only was uncomfortable, but also resulted in the occlusion of the SteamVR sensors, which made my display often become grey. So the idea on paper is good to deliver a headset that is not uncomfortable on your face and that you can flip up when you have to take a pause from VR, but in reality, it works only as much as the hinge properly does its job, and if over time it becomes loose, then you have a problem.

The headset features two little dials on the bottom, one on the left and the other on the right corner so that you can adjust the focus for both eyes. I performed this operation pretty fast, closing before one eye and then the other one. After that, I had the whole scene in focus.

Visuals

Given the high resolution of the display, visuals are where I concentrated my attention the most during the hands-on. Let’s start from the bright side of them: the resolution is literally incredible and so are the colors. I could perceive no screen door effect (SDE is almost gone already on Quest 3, and this headset has 3x of the pixels of the Quest) and everything looked very crisp. Thanks to the OLED displays, the colors were very bright and the black pixels truly looked black and not greyish like on LCD headsets. I was impressed by this, the visuals were amazing. For comparison, the BigScreen Beyond has 2560 x 2560 pixels per eye, so in this category of compact headsets, the MeganeX SuperLight 8K, with its 3552 x 3840 pixels per eye, truly shines.

But I couldn’t avoid noticing some issues, though: first of all, there was a constant Barrel distortion I noticed in the imagery. The first unit I tried was showcasing a 360 video and this effect was very noticeable (maybe there was something wrong with the device or the video playback). The second unit I tried was showing a 3D environment I could navigate in and the effect was much less evident, but if I attentively looked at some straight lines, I could perceive it. Then the lenses gave a good image in the center, but the periphery of them showed clear aberrations signs, mostly spherical, but also a little bit on the chromatic side. As long as I looked straight, things were fine, but if my eyes started wandering around too much, the effect was evident. The eye box didn’t look too small. Regarding the FOV, I honestly didn’t pay much attention to it, but it looked a bit less than the one on the Quest 3 headset I usually employ. I guess FOV is perceived as a pain point for this headset because it is the only specification not listed on the website.

Germany's car giants were once the envy of the world, but now find themselves facing a myriad of threats.

BMW and Mercedes-Benz have issued profit warnings in recent weeks amid slumping EV sales in Europe and brutal competition in China, while Volkswagen is also facing a reckoning.

On Wednesday VW said net profit for the three months to September 30 plunged by almost 64% to 1.57 billion euros, with a 30% decline to 12.8 billion euros for the first nine months of the year.

A 4% rise in vehicle sales in North America and 16% growth in South America for the nine months was offset by a 1% decline in western Europe and a 12% slide in China — VW's biggest market outside Europe. It now expects to deliver about nine million vehicles this year, or about 240,000 fewer than 2023.

Volkswagen is seeking to cut billions in costs after issuing two profit warnings in three months. On Monday, its top union official said the company was planning factory closures in Germany for the first time, along with pay cuts and layoffs. The Golf and Polo maker is one of Germany's biggest employers with about 300,000 workers

Until now, the AR glasses have only been available to developers in the US. However, Snap announced that the latest version of its technological marvel will soon be available in Europe — but only for developers and creative professionals for the time being. I was invited by Snap Inc. to test the Spectacles 5.

The first thing you notice when you put on Spectacles 5 is the ultra-bright 2000 nits clear display. Thanks to the electrochromatic lenses, which can be darkened via the menu automatically, the headset can also be used outdoors in bright daylight — a really impressive feature!

Although the colors and resolution are far from perfect, the glasses already offer probably the best AR display available for the money.

Operation is entirely via precise hand tracking and gestures, which works surprisingly well after a short period of familiarization. The technology only reaches its limits in fast-paced rhythm games.

Two cameras in the front control all 6-DOF tracking and detect your surroundings. Two invisible infrared cameras on the bottom of the headset can also detect hands outside the central field of view. This feature is ingenious and will become the gold standard for everyday devices.

By the way, Snap offers spectacle wearers the option to insert their own prescription clip inserts into the inside of the Spectacles. However, I have also seen people pull the Spectacles over their own glasses if they were small enough. I don't know if and how much this can cause scratches.

VR pioneer, author, and studio founder Jesse Schell was interviewed by Meta on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Reality Labs. In this interview he talks about the beginnings, the present and the future of virtual reality.

When asked what he is most looking forward to in the next ten years, Schell said:

"The thing that’s going to change everything the most is going to be AI, and there’s going to be this crossover between AI and virtual reality that I think people aren’t going to expect because the power that AI brings is going to be these in-game characters that behave in a realistic way.

They speak coherently. They can have a conversation with you, and they can have real emotions, and that’s going to all seem very real. And combining that with the immersion of VR so that these characters are in the room, in the space, in the place with you—I think we’re going to see a whole new medium of story-based games that are largely about talking."

Jesse Schell predicts a genre he calls adaptive in-home story games and gives an example:

"Imagine a mixed reality game. You put on your headset, and you’re just looking inside of your house, and the doorbell rings. So you get up, and you go to your physical door. You open the physical door, and standing outside is a virtual character, who says, 'Hey, I need to come inside.' They’ve got a bag of groceries. And you follow them into your kitchen because the headset knows how your whole house is laid out. So the character starts putting these items down on the counter and says, 'I need you to help me.' And you start helping them. You cut the virtual bread loaf and slice vegetables and get everything ready. [...]

While that’s happening, the character explains to you what’s going on. 'The problem is up in your attic. There are these creatures, and you and I, we’re going to go up there and we’re going to get them, but first we need to finish getting the bait ready."'

Schell believes such mixed-reality experiences could be possible in a few years, with stories and AI characters that adapt and improvise to spatial conditions.

Some of the first hands-ons with Survios’ upcoming Alien: Rogue Incursion have emerged, revealing a promising look at one of the biggest entries in VR this year.

In case you haven’t been following along, Alien: Rogue Incursion is coming to all major VR headsets this December, letting you take on the role of Zula Hendricks, a resilient former Colonial Marine with a complicated past on a dangerous mission to rescue friend and former squad mate.

Tackling the ship’s Xenomorph infestation, you fight alongside your synthetic companion Davis 01, tasking you to fight your way to the heart of the Gemini Exoplanet Solutions research facility and confront the secrets waiting within. There, we’re promised “deadly horrors” which could spell the end for humankind.

Now, a few outlets have published the first hands-on reports with Rogue Incursion.

In Leanne Butkovic’s preview for IGN, she said it “certainly had classic moments of Alien horror.” There’s no “but” there either. Butkovic goes on to praise the Rogue Incursion’s immersive environment, smart narrative beats, and intuitive weapons and tools.

It’s doesn’t appear to go too hard on wave shooter mechanics either, as Butkovic says the game “wasn’t endlessly frenetic.”

“If anything, it deliberately moves slowly in parts to spatially acclimate, to give people like me who can’t help but touch things that are laying around, a chance to explore and discover the story of this Alien property for myself,” Butkovic said.

Wired magazine does not devote a lot of time to electric cars, so when it runs a story saying the new Renault 5 EV is will be a “smash hit,” it’s time to sit up and pay attention. Now, before we get carried away, Wired gives the Renault 5 a rating of 8 out of 10 — good, but not perfect. Range could be better and back seat passengers may find leg and hip room a little tight, but there is a lot to love about the new car, starting with styling.

“The new Renault 5 EV is unashamedly nostalgic in look, mining a design trend that’s been around so long that retro is almost retro,” Wired says. “Yet when you see it in the flesh for the first time resistance is futile. Here, surely, is the electric car that will demolish any lingering preconceptions, a surprisingly sophisticated conduit for all-round feel-good vibes that’s packed with big-car tech.” That is high praise indeed. Renault boss Luca de Meo couldn’t agree more. “Some products are magical,” he said. “You don’t have to hold endless discussions, everybody is always in agreement on what needs to be done. And they do it. There’s no inertia.”

Renault 5 EV Shines

A little history is called for. The Renault R5 first appeared in 1972 as a competitor to the Fiat 127 (which later was produced in Russia as a Lada before it reappeared later as the Yugo). From 1976 until 1983, it was sold in North America as Le Car, a rather sly way of emphasizing its Gallic origins to customers who would not know an R5 from an avocado. The R5 was no track day star. It came with a 782cc 4-cylinder engine. A 956cc engine was optional and a 1289cc engine was made available in 1974. Despite its modest power, the R5 was the best selling car in France (and much of Europe) from 1972 until 1986. It was cheap to buy, economical to operate, rugged, and one of the first cars to feature a hatchback instead of a trunk.

Wired writes, “The new R5 aims to brighten your day via its candy colors, and an exterior and interior design that prompts an expertly executed Proustian rush. The silhouette might be familiar, but the new car has fuller proportions and imaginative postmodern touches galore. There’s a cheeky little four corner graphic in the headlights that ‘winks’ as you approach. The foglights below mimic that motif, while the vertical taillights are another echo of the original. They’re now designed for a degree of aerodynamic efficiency that would have boggled the minds of Renault’s engineers back in the day. The chunky wheel arches call to mind the mid-engined R5 rally car, and the new car’s roof can be had in a variety of treatments. It’s a five door car but the rear door handles are cleverly hidden away. And the old car’s hood vent reappears here as a state-of-charge indicator. Each strip represents 20 percent of the available energy.”

Fans of the R5 will recall that Renault stuffed a turbocharged engine into the car where the rear seat used to be, widened the rear axle by a foot or more, and created one of the quickest road cars you could buy at the time. The car was a beast to drive, with many test drivers reporting the turbo was more like an on/off switch. Controlling the available power was tricky, even for professional drivers, but the performance was exhilarating, to say the least.

Specs & Prices

The new R5 uses a bespoke platform, called AmpR, so it has a flat floor and longish wheelbase despite measuring only 3.9 meters (12.8 feet) in overall length. The battery’s case helps stiffen the structure. The new R5 comes with two batteries — 40 kWh and 52 kWh. There are also three motors available — 70 kW, 90 kW, and 110n kW — which are equivalent to 94, 121, and 150 hp, respectively. Both batteries contain prismatic NMC cells from Renault’s battery partner AESC. According to Renault, both the vehicles themselves and the batteries will be manufactured in northern France. Only the larger battery will be available at the start of production.

Prices start at £22,995 ($29,830) with uprated models selling for £30,000 ($38,890), yet the R5 is not a cheap car in terms of its engineering specs. Multilink rear suspension and disc brakes all-round are unusual in this class, suggesting a big-car character in a compact package, Wired says. A heat pump is standard. Maximum charging power is 100 kW — enough to replenish the battery from 15 to 80% in 30 minutes. There is also an 11 kW AC charger built in. Renault says cars fitted with the 52 kWh battery have a range of 255 miles WLTP. An equivalent EPA range would be right around 200 miles, although Renault has no current plans to market the car in US.